Physics + Hippies = ?

I’m involved in a lot of different outreach activities, but I added a new one to the list today that’s a bit stranger than the others: working at the physics booth at the Oregon Country Fair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Country_Fair). The OCF is the yearly giant hippie gathering outside Eugene that’s full of art, music, performance, crafts, and creatively costumed (and notably un-costumed) people. Several of us, physics department faculty and graduate students, had a booth on energy and solar power, with hands-on activities involving photovoltaics, generators, motors, and related things:

Here’s me:

It was fun, and we had a lot of very diverse interactions. Kids liked the “toys,” and like discovering what’s involved in generating and storing energy, and adults had lots of questions and things they wanted to chat about. (At various times, I talked about the solar spectrum, energy efficiency, electrons and holes in semiconductors, antimatter, and particle-wave duality. Plus, I listened to an odd, elaborate plan for dropping large parabolic mirrors into conflict zones so people could use them as heat-directing weapons. Really.)

The is was the second year of the physics booth, which grew out of long-running Fair involvement by my colleague Stan Micklavzina , who does amazing performances based on physics demonstrations. Fellow biophysicist Jim Remington put lots of work into the setup, including all of the booth construction in the weeks before the Fair. Below: graduate students taking a break (right: Andrea Yocom, who organized much of our activities):